The newsroom lights burned through the night, and every headline told the same lie — The Imperial Crest under investigation. John's name was plastered across every network screen, his picture framed between suspicion and scandal.
Rita stood before the main screen in her office, arms folded tightly, jaw set. The storm had moved faster than expected. Overnight, their stock had dropped by eight percent; investors demanded explanations, and the board's confidence wavered like a flame in the wind.
Dalton knocked once before stepping in. "It's worse than we thought. Half the suppliers have paused contracts until the probe clears."
"There is no probe," Rita said, voice sharp.
"They don't care," he replied. "Perception is reality."
She closed her eyes briefly. "Where's John?"
"In the boardroom," Dalton said. "Trying to stop a mutiny."
Rita grabbed her tablet and followed him out.
Inside the boardroom, the air was heavy with tension. Twelve men and women sat around the long oak table, their voices low but angry. John stood at the head, calm but cold, his fingers pressed against the polished surface.
One of the board members, a grey-haired man named Linton, spoke first. "Mr Raymond, we can't pretend this isn't serious. The press is killing us. We need to state an apology."
"For what?" John asked evenly.
"For the reconstruction scandal," Linton replied. "Even if it's false, silence looks like guilt."
John's gaze was steady. "Apologies imply mistakes. We haven't made any."
A woman on the left, Ms Patel, leaned forward. "With respect, the markets don't care about truth. They care about optics. Global View's story has already reached the international sector. Investors in Singapore are withdrawing."
John's voice cut through the room. "Then let them. The Crest was not built to bow to headlines. It was built to outlast them."
A murmur of unease followed. Dalton caught Rita's glance from the doorway, and she gave a small shake of her head. This wasn't going well.
John straightened. "We'll issue one statement — not an apology, but a fact. Every record of our reconstruction funding is clean. Anyone who questions it will answer to proof."
Linton exhaled heavily. "And if they release more?"
John looked up. "Then we release everything."
The room fell silent.
When the meeting ended, Rita followed John into his office. The tension finally cracked once the door closed.
"You can't keep dismissing them," she said. "They're panicking."
"Good," John replied. "Panic makes people reveal who they really are."
She frowned. "That's cynical, even for you."
"It's necessary," he said quietly. "Someone inside The Crest is feeding information to Andrew Cole. The story was too detailed. They knew about our financial divisions and reconstruction timelines."
Rita's breath caught. "An internal leak."
"Exactly." He turned toward the glass wall overlooking the city. "I want you to use Morgan Jud. Quietly. No reports, no digital trails. If someone's bleeding us from the inside, I want to know who before the next headline drops."
Rita nodded. "Consider it done."
That night, Rita met Morgan Jud in a dim corner of a private café. He was younger than she expected, mid-thirties, with sharp features and a restlessness that spoke of too many sleepless nights behind computer screens.
He slid a laptop from his bag and powered it on. "I heard The Crest's got itself a ghost problem."
"We need to find where the leaks are coming from," Rita said. "And who's funding Global View's campaign?"
He started typing. "I've been following the data flow since the story broke. Whoever's behind this is good — not corporate good, government good. Layers of proxies, false accounts, and deep-web reroutes. But they slipped once."
She leaned closer. "Where?"
He tapped the screen. A map of network lines appeared, pulsing with threads of light. "A shell company called Luxcor International. It channels millions through ad revenue to Global View's media subsidiaries."
"Luxcor?" Rita repeated. "That's registered in Monaco."
"Exactly," Morgan said. "And it's part-owned by Mart-Dove Global."
Rita's stomach tightened. "Michael Adison."
Morgan nodded. "Your instincts were right. He's bankrolling the attack. But that's not the strange part."
He zoomed in on another line — a faint secondary connection running from Luxcor to an unlisted offshore account. "See this?"
Rita frowned. "What is it?"
"The account funding Luxcor belongs to someone else — someone Mart-Dove reports to. Whoever this is, they're the real architect."
"Can you trace it?"
"I can try," Morgan said. "But whoever's behind it knows how to hide. The digital signature is old — military-grade encryption. Not something a businessman like Michael could manage alone."
Rita's mind raced. "So someone's directing him."
"More like owning him," Morgan said.
He glanced at her. "You know what this means, right? If they've reached your internal servers, they can twist any record they want. Make you look guilty even when you're not."
She exhaled slowly. "Then we have to move faster. I'll handle the internal side."
Morgan closed his laptop. "You'll need to be careful. If this person's as deep as they seem, they probably already know we're looking."
Rita met his gaze, her expression resolute. "Let them know. It's time they realise The Crest doesn't crumble twice."
Across the city, in the penthouse of a silent skyscraper, Michael Adison poured himself a drink. The city lights reflected in the glass, fractured and beautiful.
He turned as the door opened. A man entered — tall, dressed in dark grey, face obscured by the shadow of the room.
"You met with Raymond," the man said.
Michael smiled faintly. "You sound disappointed."
"I told you not to make contact," the stranger replied.
"Relax," Michael said. "He didn't bite. He's still chasing ghosts."
The man stepped closer, setting a small case on the table. "You forget your place. You're a tool, not a partner."
Michael's smile froze. "And who are you to remind me of that?"
The stranger leaned forward, his tone like ice. "Call me what they all do — The Benefactor."
Michael's face paled. "You're real."
The man opened the case, revealing a series of encrypted drives. "These contain the Sovereign's remaining records. Harrison West may have died, but his vision did not. You'll keep playing your part, Mr Adison — until I decide you're no longer useful."
Michael swallowed hard. "And if I refuse?"
The Benefactor's faint smile never reached his eyes. "You won't."
He turned and walked away, leaving Michael standing in silence as the weight of invisible chains tightened around his neck.
At The Imperial Crest, the lights of the main office flickered softly. Rita sat alone at her desk, files spread across the table. Morgan's words echoed in her mind: They've already reached your servers.
She accessed the internal network and began combing through encrypted logs. Hours passed in tense silence until something caught her eye — a series of login attempts masked under maintenance protocols. All from inside the building.
She traced the source manually, her fingers flying across the keys. The coordinates pointed not to an external location, but a restricted administrative terminal.
She froze. That terminal belonged to one of their own IT supervisors, a man who had been with The Crest for ten years
Her heart pounded as she pulled up the feed from the internal camera.
The screen flickered to life, showing a dark room and a familiar figure seated at the computer — typing rapidly, sending files under an unmarked code.
Rita leaned closer, her breath catching.
It was Dalton.
Her closest ally. John's right-hand man.
The file transfer completed, and the camera feed cut to black.
Rita stared at the dark screen, disbelief and betrayal twisting inside her chest.
The veins of smoke had finally shown their source — and it was coming from within